Think about it. If the country where internet originated from, and which pretty much controls the internet, wants to monitor and control it, why wouldn't other countries want to follow suit?

In fact the very excused used by Indian government and the courts in most of above cases was "Well, these companies are doing the surveillance and censoring for USA, so how dare they deny us, when they do business on our soil?".

Nonsense. Perhaps you should actually go and check the rates of Airtel broadband, Tata or even BSNL broadband services, instead of making things up. Here is news, most of them do not even offer speed above 4MB to home users. As for movies, you are seriously telling me that a guy in Banaras or say Damanjodi even, pays 500 INR to watch a movie? Perhaps you should come out of your fantasy world and start using the actual forex-exchange ratio that the rest of us use.

It's the ruling Indian Congress Party which is supporting moves to crack down on the internet, because they view the internet as a threat to their continued rule. The Indian Congress Party likes to outwardly market itself to the world as democratic, but inwardly they really want a One Party State, with a mere token opposition as a figleaf.

The ruling party has been making a lot of predatory moves since it took office - like trying to get its own men onto the Election Commission, which under the constitution is supposed to be an independent oversight body for elections. They've also brought in dubious new inventions like Electronic Voting Machines, which they claim will allow elections to be conducted more efficiently, but which could dangerously be used to rig votes, since they could easily be tampered with while offering no paper trail.

The Congress Party has increasingly been using the courts to harass members of political opposition parties, even while blocking any criminal investigation into their own party members. They are also engaging in rampant wiretapping and eavesdropping on opposition party members. The ruling party also wants to create new security agencies which are directly under the control of the central govt where the party currently holds power, while diminishing the rights of the states.

They are doing all these things because they want to keep themselves in power in perpetuity. Oh, and this is the same party that invokes Mahatma Gandhi's name at every opportunity, since they figure that by doing so, it gives them unlimited carte blanche to do whatever they want. They're just trying to keep India safely in the arms of Gandhi, you see.:p

It won't work for very long. The Mahatma Gandhi angle only works for the older folks. The young folks are not going to be that affected by it. They will not be pleased with the govt changing their lifestyle. There will be definitely some issues.. and if they get mad enough they'll vote en masse.

The censorship is targeted at the impoverished masses, the cheap labour base the creates Indian multi-millionaires while that labour is dresses in rags. With access to internet cafes available every where, the ruling elite do not want the labour base to become to aware of the gap between rich and poor in India and of course the gap between India workers and first world workers doing the same work.

They have quite successfully be divided up by castes, religion and ethnicity, to keep them struggling amongst themselves but eventually they would work together to tackle those they keep them impoverished and a free and open internet would accelerate that.

Part of it is is the Hindu religion. But mostly it is corruption and a middle class that does not seem to care. The middle class can bring about a lot of change since they are primarily what makes the economy go.

It's the rising middle class who pose the greatest threat to Congress Party rule, since they aren't so poor that they're easily cowed by the state and yet not wealthy enough to float above the fray. While the poor don't have sufficient internet access to be a threat, it's the middle class who make the most use of the internet, and are increasingly bold in their criticisms of Congress Party rule. Furthermore, Indian ex-pats living and working abroad are the most vocal critics of Congress Party rule, since th

I agree 100%, as an ex-pat. I've never liked Congress I. You know things are bullshit every time they invoke the founding fathers. While the BJP isn't exactly the bastion of goodness either, I trust them more than I would trust Congress I.

The ruling party has been making a lot of predatory moves since it took office - like trying to get its own men onto the Election Commission, which under the constitution is supposed to be an independent oversight body for elections.

On a related note, 3 FEC Commissioners are Democrats and 3 are Republicans. The Commissioners are appointed by the President, thus ensuring that a third party will never gain a seat on the FEC.

I don't think the FEC matters on that issue. Since the constitution sets up a first-past-the-post, winner take all system, there will never be enough of a third party for that to come up.

We could change it so that parties wouldn't have to reach for at least half the political spectrum, allowing room for third and however many parties to spring up, but that would require a change in the constitution, which WOULD be blocked by the two parties.

You need to study our political history more. (I'm assuming that you're an American as well.)

Virtually every major shift in Federal policy was initially driven by a third party introducing an idea or set of ideas that were inimical to the entrenched interests of the two dominating parties. In the past couple of hundred years, successful third parties have either become powerful enough to displace one of the two major players or they have seen their ideas co-opted by one or both of the two major parties.

I see no evidence that the two party system suppresses good people from running or that multiparty systems create great politicians.

What a multi-party system does is give a credible threat of revolution.

In a two-party system your choices are bad and worse (from your point of view), and the parties know this. What do they care about pleasing their base; where is it going to - to the even worse party? No, all that matters are the swing voters and unaligned groups.

It's the ruling Indian Congress Party which is supporting moves to crack down on the internet, because they view the internet as a threat to their continued rule. The Indian Congress Party likes to outwardly market itself to the world as democratic, but inwardly they really want a One Party State, with a mere token opposition as a figleaf.

I won't pretend that certain politicians *cough*Chidu*cough* wouldn't have wet dreams, but that's hardly the reality; their current standing is below even a simple majority [wikipedia.org], and they need coalition partners to survive. These coalition partners are basically a bunch of regionals who have their own agendas, and probably aren't that strong in the states anyway (DMK was booted out of power, for example. They won't get much in the next General Elections). They're also notoriou

Lol , perhaps India will let the U.N.run their business from now on.That really is a lot of people to piss off all at once.Has India ever had a revolution?I for one welcome the entertainment of giving the U.N. enough rope to really fuck up like the bureaucratic clusterwank it is.The revolution will be streamed live!

Wow. Go read some history [wikipedia.org]. Does the name Mahatma Gandhi ring any bells?

That was british india not india.

India's history is just as old and colorful and barbaric and glorious as China's, Japan's, Thailand's, Indonesia's,... Just like Europe, the despots ruled with absolute power over their peasants, and lots of peasants died for them, whether Indian Raj despots or British India despots. The peasants died. Plus ca change,...

Alexander "The Great" showed up in India, did you know?

He who fails to learn from history,...

Remind me, what is it we're disagreeing about? I tend to lose track...

I always figured that was some religious war where they finally gave the Muslims the back 40 just to go away.Never really thought of it as being against the English.Jolly good point watching that one "sober" this time. Pip pip.

I always figured that was some religious war where they finally gave the Muslims the back 40 just to go away.

My recollection is the Indians were bending over backwards to attempt to accomodate the Muslim side, but the latter were having none of it. Perhaps they'd just run out of patience suffering under the British. I can respect that. Perfidious Albion's got a lot to apologize for (they were vicious brutes in so damned many ways). Then you end up with the mess of millions of people moving to "their" new country from wherever they happened to be when the starter pistol went off.

What India lacks is indoor plumbing for much of the population. I don't even know where to start with that place, but internet censorship isn't high on the to do list. Don't get me wrong, I love India, some of the most beautiful women in the world, ancient culture etc, but so many of them are living the exact same lifestyles as people did there a thousand years ago.

This case in particular is a prime example, the sites blocked were only in certain regions and at the behest of a production studio that had a new movie coming out while also owning several ISPs. Corruption that would stagger most of us in the west is everday life in India.

Well, this is a case of trying to block "see how much better the rest of the world looks" after all, if your neighbors next door in S.Korea and Japan have indoor running water and toilets that wash your backside, you might just have riots when the people figure out that the government has been spending money on who knows what instead of infrastructure.

Well, this is a case of trying to block "see how much better the rest of the world looks" after all, if your neighbors next door in S.Korea and Japan have indoor running water and toilets that wash your backside, you might just have riots when the people figure out that the government has been spending money on who knows what instead of infrastructure.

I think you're on the nose.

To quote an Indian-born programmmer friend of mine (who grew up from age 2 here in an afluent "western" country), after he went bac

I went to China and it's like wow.. and here we are in the Indian subcontinent has not gone much further. The internet does expose Indians to all kinds of things that they would not normally be exposed to. Gives them all kinds of ideas. Good for them!

I've traveled all over this rock myself, exploring other places is a great experience. For those that can't experience it though the internet does really expose others to other ideas, and that does make it worthwhile.

I do not think people in the west understand economies of developing countries.
To talk about sanitation, and use that to judge a country is very myopic.
There is a massive schism in India between the rich and the poor. India do have poor people, and sanitary conditions are not ok. But it also have some of the richest business houses around, like the Tatas and Reliance. Like all countries, it takes time for it to find its feet. All countries go through this. For a country which is as massive as India, and w

I do not think people in the west understand economies of developing countries.

Canada was a developing country 200 years ago, back when this stuff was shiny and new or not even developed, and changing so fast your eyes would pop. Usually in under 30 year time spans, the entire country was hooked into it, or it was easily available.

What it requires is vision and the desire to deploy it. As for India being massive? Meh, tiny when compared to Canada or Russia. What India has is population, meaning an easy and available workforce. Something is fundamentally broken within the state.

To quote an Indian-born programmmer friend of mine (who grew up from age 2 here in an afluent "western" country), after he went back there recently for a visit, "a lot of people still shit in the ditch there".

That kind of said it all to me.

Yes, but it's not like people aren't aware that this isn't the best thing to do.

The problem is that infrastructure development takes time and effort and vision. What we've got is a bunch of do-gooders and money-grubbing politicians. And a few people like Sreedharan who are really trying to do the right thing!

In the meantime, there's no reason we can't work towards both sanitation and Internet freedom, don't you? One of the advantages of a huge population is that we can split the work-load to different group

What India needs is a robust justice system that can quickly make fair decisions. That is the root cause of everything. You cannot have justice without money and that is the main issue. You can punish corruption without a fair justice system. If we can fix that, in about a generation or so things will be a lot better.

Once you start arguing over collective vs individual rights, you start down a slippery slope. You allow every petty tyrant to fence off their group against the influence of the one in the next country, the next city, just down the road, etc. Pretty soon, its the Hatfields and the McCoys. Everyone devolves into little fiefdoms and its back to tribalism.

India, or better yet, Indians, have the right to publicize their culture and ideology on the 'Net. And the rest of the world can take it, leave it, or adopt parts of it as they see fit. This is all good. Likewise, The West can do the same and Indians can adopt it or ignore it by voting with their mouse button. If Indian culture is so weak that it can't survive or adapt in the face of others, perhaps it shouldn't survive.

They're only blocking the more popular sites. You can still use Tor to access the blocked sites. And don't forget that if the ISPs throttle torrent file transfers, you can always point out that perfectly legitimate torrents such as Linux ISOs are being blocked.
That's how I got Airtel to remove torrent throttling from my connection.

Blogger now has.in domain at the highest level, so it makes it convenient for google to implement india specific restrictions.
Common indians don't care much about the internet, it is only companies with huge warchets that have to fight this battle, in the hope of getting a much wider userbase at a future time.
But given that the american law is being de-facto exported across the world, all victories will be short-lived.
YMMV...

People in the developed world, in line with their general ignorance of developing countries, seem to not be aware of some important facts.
India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015. [thenextweb.com]
7% of India has internet access, and given India's population, even 7% of its population amounts to more people than many Western European countries.
Internet censorship is therefore a big deal and it will affect the lives of millions.
Like all developing countries, India grapples with poverty. But on the other end, the rich and middle-class in India are at levels of Western society, in terms of both awareness and with a very major stake in the internet.

The Indian courts have not explicitly blocked file sharing sites. All they have provided is a generic order [google.com] to stop the copyright infringement. The company Copyright Labs [facebook.com] which is looking to stop the piracy of its films, maintain that they provided the ISPs with a list of specific URLs that were to be blocked. The ISPs have apparently decided (40 days after the blocks were requested) to block entire domains rather than individual URLs. One of these parties is liable for damages for the blanket blocks.

Free internet poses risks. Risks are an opportunity for regulators to expand their fiefdom. The risk-averse public sector, if left unchecked (by unbalanced budgets) will take over the free economy like a bad antibiotic-immune staph infection, or auto-immune disease.

I deal internationally with many nations, and have repeatedly tried, but have never been able to do anything successfully in India. Despite low linguistic barriers, savvy businesspeople, educated populace, and an adorably intelligent PM (Singh), there is just an impossible number of bureaucrats to obtain approval from. I attribute it to a tipping-scale of public-sector employees set up by Indira Gandhi. Once you create a certain ratio of regulator jobs to the private sector jobs, it's very difficult to reverse it.

By 2nd analogy, regulators are like basketball referees, you need a few. but too many make it impossible to navigate the basketball court.

Public sector regulators do not get rewarded when things go right in the private sector (what did they have to do with it but stay out of the way?) but are punished for allowing it if something went wrong. It's by nature risk averse, and prone to setting limits on everything. It's easier for a public sector manager to hire a new person than to undertake the unpleasant and near-impossible task of laying off an unproductive person. To get new hires, you need a risk or danger (or type of foul) to protect the public from. At some point the public has such a stake in public sector job security (family with salaries from referee jobs) that it's nearly impossible to reverse, and the economy - the basketball game - slows and stagnates. Africa has the same problem.

Eventually, (my theory goes) incompetence sets in and almost appears to heal the public sector employment imbalance. The public bureaucracy becomes so crowded that nothing gets done, and the regulators start to feel anonymous and disenfranchised by the command-and-control network. China's Communist Party had so much corruption in the 1980s that the regulations were completely randomized, and the economy grew by accepted practice of ignoring entrenched regulators. The refs in China were blowing whistles that everyone ignored, basketball players passed and circled around them, or paid the regulator to sit off the court. Unfortunately, like (analogy 3) Lyme disease, the idled refs never really go away. Indira created lots of public sector employment. Hiring public employees is like feeding a (#4) dragon that gets bigger with every bite, and even if it's a nice dragon now, you will still be in the cage with it tomorrow.